


You chose to not see

by Hotaru_Tomoe



Series: The English job [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Did I Mention Angst?, M/M, Old Age, Sherlock is dead, So much angst, Translation, Victor Is Sad, john is blind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 16:40:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6712807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hotaru_Tomoe/pseuds/Hotaru_Tomoe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last confrontation between Victor and John. Words kept secret for too many years are spoken, revealing a painful hidden truth.<br/>This is a transation in English of a story of mine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You chose to not see

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Hai scelto di non vedere](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6695884) by [Hotaru_Tomoe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hotaru_Tomoe/pseuds/Hotaru_Tomoe). 



> English is not my first language, so I hope there aren't too many errors.

"Summing up, you're saying that I can't do anything."  
Victor gets up from his chair and walks nervously back and forth in the living room, out of the view of the PC camera.  
The man on the screen averts his eyes and rubs the corner of a sheet of paper between his fingers.  
"Legally speaking? Unfortunately not: the register of death certificates is public and can be consulted by anyone, and the article has already been printed, by the way."  
"Yeah," Victor mumbled, staring with hatred at the morning newspaper crumpled with violence in the trash bin.  
"It's just a blurb in the local news pages: maybe no one has seen it; besides, your husband retired from work several years ago, I doubt that his name still says something to people nowadays."  
Victor shows a grimace that says that he's not convinced at all, and sits again in front of the laptop.  
"But if someone comes to bother you at home... journalists, old fans, peepers, let me know right away, for those I can intervene."  
"Thanks Simon. Send me the bill for tonight call."  
The other man shook his head, annoyed.  
"You're joking, right? Victor, I'm your lawyer for thirty years, I don't make you pay for nonsense like this."  
"Thank you."  
"Don't even mention it. Indeed, if there's anything else I can do for you..."  
"No, not really, but thanks again."  
"All right. Good night, Victor."  
"Same to you, Simon."  
Victor turns off the computer and all the lights, and drags himself down the hall to the bedroom where now he sleeps alone.  
Forgotten in the trash bin, the crumpled newspaper shows to the empty room the article that has enraged him so much.

_"We learn today that a week ago Sherlock Holmes, aged 76, has died. His name probably will not say anything to the new generations, but in the past he was the most famous private investigator in London and he helped Scotland Yard on several occasions. There wasn't any funeral ceremony and the husband of the deceased, Victor Trevor, didn't disclose information about the place of burial."_

  
For a few hours Victor believes that the article appeared in the newspaper is really gone unnoticed and he could be alone with his grief, but just before noon the doorbell rings, startling him.  
He puts an old postcard between the pages of the book he's reading and listens, motionless and silent.  
It's not the cleaning lady: he gave her a few days off, besides she has the keys of the flat, and Victor doesn't know anyone who might visit him: since he retired has always led a very secluded life, like Sherlock. So either it's a door to door salesman or it's the only person that Victor doesn't want to meet: John Watson.  
When, after a few minutes of silence, a sharp knock replaces the ringing of the bell, he knows he was right: a seller can't be so insistent, so it's Watson.  
Victor doesn't move and other long minutes pass, while the man behind the door scuffs his feet on the mat, waiting to capture a sound that will make him understand whether or not there's someone inside.  
Right then Victor's mind projects the image of Sherlock, who materializes on the couch next to him, a question in his eyes as silently indicates the door, but Victor closes his eyes and shakes the head: he doesn't want to meet him, doesn't wants to talk to him.  
John's footsteps go toward to the elevator and when Victor opens his eyes, Sherlock is no longer there.  
The former soldier doesn't give in and comes back in the afternoon with the same routine: he rings the bell and then knocks; Victor doesn't give up from his purpose and ignores him, trying to finish the book he has in his hands.  
This time, before leaving, John slips a note under the door.  
Victor pretends it doesn't exist.  
  
Victor knows he's only putting off the inevitable, that John will not let go so easily; he would do the same thing in his place, but the thought doesn't make change his mind: he has long outlived empathy and compassion.  
Two days later he's forced to leave the flat, as he didn't went for shopping since Sherlock was dead and now the fridge is desolately empty, so if he wants to continue to survive, he has to go to the grocery store.  
When he comes back, he finds John sitting on the steps of the stairs, looking at him with barely restrained anger; he walks past him without saying a word and put the key in the lock, while the man behind gets up with obvious effort. Victor sighs and goes into the flat, leaving the door open: he doesn't want the neighbors to hear a row, and the sooner the conversation begins, the sooner will end.  
Without inviting him to sit down and not offering him tea, Victor places the shopping bags on the table and start putting away the groceries methodically; and if before John has looked at him angrily, now he is almost in disbelief.  
"Do you think you'll say something sooner or later?" he finally asks.  
"I guess you read the newspaper" Victor commented flatly while putting vegetables in the refrigerator drawer. In a sudden flashback it comes to his mind when the drawer hosted all the bizarre experiments of Sherlock, and his fingers scratch the cold plastic.  
"Yes!" John yells "And if they hadn't published that article, I never knew that Sherlock is... he is... "  
There's a bottle of wine at eye level, and if John will dare to ask him if Sherlock is really dead or he's pretending again, Victor'll break it on his head and then he'll use it to cut his throat.  
John, luckily for him, doesn't say anything like that, but hasn't yet finished with his string of accusations: "For some reason I've never understood, you never liked me, but this is too much even for you! Sherlock was my best friend, and you hadn't tell me he's dead."  
John's outraged voice climbs on his shoulders and Victor squeezes viciously the refrigerator handle that has just closed.  
"And you didn't even celebrate the funeral," the former soldier continues unabated, and it's at this point that Victor turns to face him, his lips bent in a grimace that tastes like bitter triumph.  
"Sherlock didn't believe in God or in life after death, and didn't want any ceremony: a funeral would only be an insult to his memory."  
A shadow of confusion passes on John's face: "But... but... he was the best man at my wedding and the godfather to my daughter's christening."  
"He certainly didn't it out of Christian devotion" Victor exlaims, his voice dripping sarcasm.  
John seems troubled by this revelation while he walk to the couch where he sits, perhaps convinced to know Sherlock better, and Victor took the opportunity to press him: "In any case, if you cared about him, you'd been in touch in these years."  
John opens and clenches his fists in anger and then slams them hard on the knees.  
"It's your fault! It's because of your insane jealousy that we have strayed" he accuses him "I know you've always been opposed to the fact that we were friends, although I have assured you several times that I wasn't a danger to your wedding."  
Yes, this is true: Victor had made sure to separate them, but the former soldier is wrong, he didn't act out of jealousy, he did it to protect Sherlock, to save him.  
Because John periodically swooped in Sherlock's life when he was tired of baby food and diapers, and begged Sherlock to let him follow an investigation, but in the end, satisfied with his supply of thrills and adrenaline, he went back to Mary and his family.  
John wasn't there when the door of 221B closed and Sherlock's eyes veiled with sadness, before he was able to hide it behind a false and illusory coolness.  
John wasn't there when Sherlock stood at the window, drawing John's outline on the glass with his fingertips.  
John wasn't there when Sherlock stood motionless in bed for days, curled up under the covers, with closed eyes and the desire to not reopen them again.  
John wasn't there when Sherlock moved feverishly his hands on the floor or on drawers bottom and sucked his fingers, hoping that those white grains were cociane, instead of sugar or dust.  
John wasn't there while Sherlock was dying slowly in silence.  
It was like that every time the former soldier entered and exited from Sherlock's life at his will, and then Victor was left to pick him off the ground, trying to reassemble the pieces of his heart, to hold his forehead as he vomited in the loo during a withdrawal crisis, to force a spoonful of honey between his lips when Sherlock refused to eat for days.  
This is the reason why, at one point, Victor took the situation in hand and tried to separate the two of them as much as possible. Not that he managed to erase his husband's pain, but at least he limited his self-destructive behaviour.  
There are many things that Victor want to throw back at John, now that Sherlock is dead and can no longer ask him to be kind to John, but not this, because if there was one thing that his husband hated was to be weak and vulnerable, and Victor will never humiliate him and his memory.  
This doesn't mean that he'll leave John continue to believe that he's right, poor martyr bullied by the jealous husband.  
Victor dips his hands into the pockets of his trousers and goes in the living room, indifferent to John's angry little drama.  
"Do you know what was the thing that Sherlock has repeated to me more often during these thirty years of marriage?"  
"You're an idiot?" John spits angrily.  
"No" Victor replied calmly "It's 'I'm sorry'."  
John raises his head in disbelief: Sherlock never apologized for anything.  
"Sherlock didn't apologize if he went to sleep and forget all the lights on" Victor says, staring into space, chasing memories "He wasn't sorry when tea ended and he forgot to buy it back, or when he forgot birthdays and anniversaries. No, it usually happened at the end of a perfectly normal day, where nothing had happened, or after being out for dinner to celebrate the success of an investigation. We were in bed, or here in the living room, or sitting at the kitchen table, and suddenly he sighed and bent his lips in a strange way, as if he was sad and at the same time disgusted with himself, and he said 'I'm sorry'. For several years that sent me into a rage, but in the end I resigned myself to the evidence. He said it also just before he died, you know?"  
"I don't understand" John says slowly "For what he was sorry?"  
There would be almost a little pity in Victor gaze, except that it's drowned in an ocean of resentment and contempt.  
"To not love me enough, to not love me as I loved him. Sherlock was my greatest love, I have never experienced anything like that for anyone else, but it wasn't mutual. To him, I have never been that love."  
Sherlock has been a good husband and a wonderful life partner, there have been adventures and trips, and they have spent many happy years together; people often said, laughing, that Victor was a saint because he tolerated the craziness and the many oddities of his husband, and that Sherlock was very lucky to have him at his side, but, to tell the truth, it was him the one feeling lucky to have met a man so unique, who had made his life unique too.  
But Sherlock had never been with him completely, even in the early moments of their relationship: his heart and his soul never belonged entirely to Victor, a part of him flew away to the house of a man who had moved on with a woman and had a daughter with her. And when Sherlock realized he was thinking of John, lowered his eyes and murmured "I'm sorry."  
As Victor speaks, John begins to shake his head in denial, first almost imperceptibly, then faster and faster, like a dog who wants to shake the water off, but Victor'll not allow him to cover his ears anymore, and he pronounces those words that Sherlock never allowed him to say, for fear that John would have been shocked, embarrassed or uncomfortable.  
To hell with him.  
"It's you I'm talking about: it was you the greatest love of Sherlock."  
For a moment Victor thinks that John will have a heart attack in his living room, judging by the way he's gasping desperately for air; but finally he exhales a weak "I..." and then remains silent.  
"And now do you want to know where he's buried?"  
"Of course! I want to visit his grave, Sherlock was my best friend."  
"It is not the behavior of a friend what I've seen from you. If you really were the friend who claim to be, you would have had mercy on him and wouldn't have made him suffer."  
"You can't... you can't blame me for not having realized that Sherlock had feelings for me," he whispers weakly.  
Victor's throat produces a strange hollow sound, something between a laugh and a sob.  
"Is that what you told yourself all these years to sleep at night?"  
"I-I haven't done anything like that."  
"Stop lying" Victor's voice is a whiplash cleaving in the air "After all the things Sherlock has done for you, you can't make me believe that you don't know how much he loved you! You knew, you've always known, and the truth is that you chose to not see, to close your eyes and pretend nothing has happened. You lied to yourself, and I don't give a toss about it, but you lied to him too."  
The moment John looks away, implicitly acknowledging that he's right, Victor strikes a new blow: "I hope you've had a good life, at least all his sacrifices will not be in vain."  
"Please" John whispers in a shaky and barely audible voice "Tell me where he's buried. I... I just want to say him goodbye."  
"No" Victor answers immediately "For all I care you have already said him goodbye many years ago."  
"You're just a selfish and vindictive bastard" John growls before geting up and out of there, closing the door with such force that some crumbs of plaster fall to the ground.  
The imaginary figure of his husband reappears, in the exact point where John Watson sat until a moment before (and where else he could be?), watching him with those piercing eyes and the sad fold of the lips.  
_"What have you done, Vic?"_ that face seems to say.  
"What had to be done a long time ago, Sherlock," he says in a low voice in the empty room.  
He doesn't care that Sherlock would have acted differently, he doesn't care to appear hard and insensitive, he doesn't care about the man who is walking away along the sidewalk until he disappears from the view.  
And he is a selfish and vindictive bastard, yes, but at least in death, he wants to keep Sherlock only for himself, and to not share anything about him to anyone, not even his gravestone. And now, now that there is only silence, now that Sherlock can't feel sorry anymore for not having loved him enough, eventually he's just his.  
John Watson will take up his cross.  
As Sherlock did silently for all these years.


End file.
